Why 'Time Spent' Is One of Marketing's Favorite Metrics

Time is money. Time is the enemy. Time is on your side.

We talk a lot about time, but the one thing we definitively know about time is there's never enough. For a marketer, that means you're going to have to work hard to get a minute or two from a consumer. You need to earn it, so if your site can garner a high time spent, pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

"Time spend is not a very actionable metric, it's more a sign that you've done the right thing," says David Marks, VP of product at StumbleUpon, whose average session length is an impressive 30 minutes for women, 22 minutes for men. Marks attributes the site's high time spent to the experience on StumbleUpon. "There are many reasons why people come to StumbleUpon, but a lot of it is focused around inspiring them, surprising them, entertaining them with unexpected content," he says. When users are browsing a category, they see hundreds of things they've never seen before that are very high quality about a specific topic of interest. Read more...